Hello World! Tomorrow I turn in the manuscript for the biography of the founder of Mattel Toy company and the creator of Barbie: Ruth Handler. She has kept me away from my blog this last month, but it’s been a fun writing trip to create “Ruth and Barbie: The Story of the World’s Most Famous Doll and the Woman Who Created Her.”
Ruth has an amazing story. The tenth and last child of Polish/Jewish immigrants, she was an entreprenuerial and marketing genius. Her husband Elliot was the shy, retiring designer and she was the corporate dynamo. The company was already making millions before she came up with Barbie, and contrary to what feminists (including myself ) thought about the doll’s creation, Ruth’s idea was to give little girl’s a grown-up toy so they could fantasize about being grown-up women. Unfortunately, the model she found was a German sex toy, but you’ll have to read the book (out from Harper/Collins next year on Barbie’s fiftieth birthday) to get that story. Ruth also lost a breast to cancer and her company to a federal fraud charge, but rehabilitated herself (ala but better than Martha Stewart) by creating a line of breast prostheses that made her a hero to breast cancer survivors.
Why don’t more people know about Ruth Handler? She built a $300 million dollar company and created one of the most recognizable icons in the world, but she was a woman. No one bothered to write her biography, and the press refers to her as a “co-founder,” at best, of Mattel. I assure you, without Ruth, her husband would have been designing light fixtures or toys for Louis Marx, who was the big toy company back then.
I’m looking forward to getting back into the election news and will be writing for Politics Magazine (formerly Campaigns & Elections), Huffington Post, Women’s Voices for Change, and of course, right here. Thanks for your comments, especially about my novel “Eleanor vs. Ike” which is still timely reading!!
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